By Sanchali Basu
AUSTIN: I had the good fortune of meeting my guru, Swami Swahananda last Sunday, October 14 when he had come for the opening of Austin Vedanta Society Center. He is 91 years old and has recently been through some health challenges.
Swami Swahananda is the disciple of Swami Vijnanananda who is one of the sixteen direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He has a huge following of about 2,000 disciples spread all over the world. He received initiation at the tender age of 16 and completed a double M.A.in English Literature and English Language before becoming a monk of the Ramakrishna order at the age of 26. He gave up his career as a lecturer to meditate in the Himalayas and was later made the head of the Delhi Ramakrishna Mission center. He was instrumental in spreading the word of the Vedanta and Swami Vivekananda to the western world by taking leadership roles in the San Francisco, Berkeley and the Hollywood centers since 1968. He has been the minister and spiritual leader of the Vedanta Society of Southern California since 1976.
I feel fortunate to have him as my guru. I got initiated into the faith by him on June 10, 2011 and my life has changed since then. In this 150th year of Swami Vivekananda’s birthday, I appreciate the relevance of his teachings, principles and philosophies more than ever before. I can relate now even more to the importance of the role that my guru and his fellow monks play in bringing about some form of peace and sanity to this modern day world of war, turmoil and unrest. The principle that the Ramakrishna order is based on, “As many faiths, as many paths,” couldn’t ring truer than at these present times, when tolerance by all is what is called for.
Swami Sarvadevananda, the assistant minister of the Hollywood, California center, who had come to Houston to conduct the Durga Puja ceremony (see page 5) encouraged Houstonians to go to Austin. Many fellow devotees had driven from Dallas and flown from India and several monks traveled with the Swami.
The local Austinites had gone to great lengths to attend to everyone’s needs and were very kind and welcoming. They had their puja at the new center the previous day. On Sunday, we listened to a short lecture by Swamiji and participated in a 20-minute meditation session. After lunch was served, we had a chance to interact with our Guru a bit more. That evening there was a short lecture session on Vedanta and a short presentation on Swami Vivekananda by local youngsters.
